Electronic devices, such as laptops, notebooks, netbooks, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones, for example, increasingly tend to include a variety of wireless communication capabilities. The wireless communication systems used by these devices are expanding into the higher frequency ranges of the communication spectrum, such as, for example, the millimeter wave region and, in particular, the unlicensed 5-7 GHz wide spectral band at 60 GHz. This expansion to higher frequencies is driven in part by the requirement for increased data rate communications used by applications such as high definition video, for example, that require multi-gigbit data rates.
MIMO antenna systems may be used to increase data throughput in wireless networks, however conventional MIMO antenna systems typically require separate antennas that are spaced apart by distances large enough to achieve the required isolation and spatial diversity between the antennas. Since propagation losses and attenuation tend to increase at these higher MM-Wave frequencies, it can become difficult to implement conventional MIMO antenna systems on the device platform due to the signal losses that are imposed over these increased distances.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.